A year after a salmonella outbreak sickened at least 1,600 people and prompted the recall of a half-billion eggs from Iowa, the unsanitary farm conditions and weak regulatory oversight spotlighted by the episode persist, The Des Moines Register reports.

The newspaper’s investigation zeroed in on farms in Iowa, which produce 14 billion eggs a year, more than any other state. It found that some major Iowa producers still aren’t meeting minimum federal standards to prevent salmonella enteritidis — a potentially fatal bacterial infection that led to last year’s recall.

The Register also found that:

Iowa’s egg producers still aren’t required to tell state or federal officials when they find salmonella on their farms.

There is little on-site testing for salmonella at egg farms. Federal inspectors review the companies’ self-reported test results, even though the laboratories performing the tests are not required to be licensed or accredited.

The Iowa operations linked to last summer’s salmonella outbreak — Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, which both are tied to businessman Austin “Jack” DeCoster — have not been fined or otherwise penalized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency says the case remains under review, however.

Many Iowa egg farms will remain largely unregulated even under new federal food-safety laws taking effect next year. They laws will apply only to farms with at least 3,000 hens, a threshold that will exclude dozens of Iowa egg producers.

Farms are alerted about upcoming routine inspections days in advance.

The Register noted that there have been no egg recalls in Iowa during the past 12 months. Last last year, however, Ohio Fresh Eggs — which long has had financial ties to DeCoster — recalled 290,000 eggs because of a risk of salmonella contamination.

U.S. labor investigators recovered $240.8 million in back wages for American workers last year amid an intensified crackdown on pay abuses in low-skill industries.

That newly released total – which reflects the amount of back wages that employers agreed to pay, or were ordered to pay, following government investigations – amounted to $890 per affected worker.

However, a recent report prepared for the Labor Department suggests that the back wage recoveries only scratch the surface of what underpaid workers actually are owed.

The report by Eastern Research Group, issued in December, estimated that in California and New York alone, minimum wage violations in 2011 cost workers at least $32.7 million a week—or about $1.7 billion a year. At least 50,000 families in the two states suffered income losses due to minimum wage violations, and at least 14,800 families were brought below the poverty level, the report found.

An attempted crackdown on wage and hour violations on two Oregon berry farms has ended in a retreat by the U.S. Labor Department, which dropped all charges against two growers it had accused of failing to pay the minimum wage to about 1,000 workers.

The case has brought scrutiny to one of the Labor Department’s most potent weapons—the “hot goods” provision of federal law that allows it to halt the interstate shipment of goods produced in violation of wage laws. It is often used to fight alleged wage theft in the garment industry, among others.

With an estimated $5.5 million dollars worth of highly perishable blueberries on the line, the Oregon farms–Pan American Berry Growers and B&G Ditchen LLC–were threatened with a court order during their 2012 harvest. It would have barred them from shipping their produce unless they paid back

A father and his 2-year-old son at a gun rights demonstration last March in Austin, Texas (Photo by Erika Rich)

After being thwarted in Congress following the 2012 school shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., gun control activists have scored some important victories in states around the country.

One of the biggest wins came in Washington State. In November, voters by a wide margin approved a state ballot measure extending, to gun shows and other private firearms transactions, a requirement for buyer background checks.

But which side has the momentum in the struggle around the nation pitting advocates of tighter controls against supporters of expanded gun rights? That remains a tough call.

With the clash now a state-by-state fight, the dueling camps make competing claims about who has gained ground and who figures to fare better in the years immediately ahead.